There are no second acts in American lives.
F Scott Fitzgerald
Sweden has gifted us with many things: Volvo, Ikea, millions of dollars from supplying the Nazis with steel (oops, forget that) and, the latest incarnation, Doom Goblin Greta Thunberg.
It is possible to have some sympathy for Ms Thunberg as the incarnation of one of those wind-up puppets whose key is turned by adults to pursue their agendas. But even puppets must grow up and take responsibility for their behaviour.
From her apogee of petulantly shrieking at the UN and making faces at Donald Trump, she was a fiery comet to the young, the internet, the woke folk and the media. But even comets reach their perigee, and what is a girl to do then?
Now at university, no doubt studying a suitably woke humanities course (although she seems to spend little time on campus), it was the good folk of Hamas who provided her with the opportunity to relight the flickering flame. Wrapping herself in a Palestinian scarf and howling about the genocidal Israelis, what better than to board a boat with a suitably minded group of activists to break the embargo on sea travel to aid the poor Gazans?
This did not work out quite out the way it was intended. There were mysterious interferences with the boats; the media seemed somewhat picky in what they depicted and – quelle surprise – the nasty Israelis boarded the boats and dragged them to their colonised land – so mean. The passengers naturally reacted by throwing their expensive phones overboard after filming the arrests and wailing about their human rights being abused. To show the sheer vindictiveness of the Jewish overlords, the Goblin was briefly incarcerated and then – shame, shame – put her on a JET plane to wing home to safety, sulking in a back row seat.
There is, of course, another take on what the Israelis did by preventing them from achieving their goal. It is doubtful whether the much put-upon Gazans, deprived of food and supplies by Hamas, would have found much use for the contraceptives and other bric-a-brac they brought. More ominously, the reaction of Hamas to a bunch of transactional useful idiots, both homosexual and scantily dressed, can only be imagined, bearing in mind how the late Yahyah Sinwar enjoyed publicly hanging a gay transgressor of his fundamentalist beliefs.
Nothing more illustrates the sheer hypocrisy and absence of moral compass than the Goblin’s absolute refusal to go to the memorial site of the October 7 massacre. Apparently, the fashionable cause of victimised Palestinians trumps the 1500-plus Israelis massacred with torture, burning, rape and abduction. Some Australians – and we know whom they are – would proudly say she is taking her lead from our very own Penny Wong, dragged kicking and screaming to Israel but refusing to go to the memorial site, presumably because it could just induce some sympathy for the victims. I joke, of course. Ms Wong is truly a pillar of rightful conscience and a beacon among our foreign ministers who will long be remembered for her enlightened stance.
After several unsuccessful attempts to, as it were, cross to the left side of the Jordan, it was time for the Goblin to move on; the flickering flame of media attention had burned low, and now the Palestinians must be left to solve their problems without her assistance.
The solution is to find a red-hot cause guaranteed to ignite consciences (well, those of a certain type) and bring back the spotlights. And it turns out to be the fight of the Saharawi people for self-determination. Who? What? Where? No one would doubt that it is a worthy cause but, let’s face it, the Goblinist comet is digging very deep.
Once again, Australia may have provided the impetus for her effort. Those followers of the progress of our own homegrown fantasist, Miss Belle Gibson, will recall that, having milked the diet-cures-cancer sales pitch to death, she announced to a waiting world that she had converted to Islam, adopted an African name and turned up in ethnic dress at fairs of the refugee Ethiopian Muslim community. Needless to say, once the baffled Ethiopians learned her history, all contact ceased, and she returned to the standard outfit of an unemployed single mother on welfare. Oh, and did I mention Helen Demidenko…
We have seen how the path of fantasist Jason Arday ended and, rightly, how those who put him in that situation should have to face up to their responsibility for what happened. As she progresses from one failing issue to another, the Goblin will become more desperate to find the right causes, only to discover (shades of Scott Fitzgerald) that the spotlight she needs, like an addict, is a very fickle mistress. It will only end in tears. And, once again, the question to be asked is: who is really responsible for putting out this petulant, self-absorbed, shallow and hypocritical pest? Thank you, Sweden, why couldn’t you have stopped at ABBA?
Robert M. Kaplan is a forensic psychiatrist, writer and historian.
